OLD-TIME TROTTERS. 191 



I speak of old Topgallant as one of the best and stoutest that 

 ever, looked through a bridle. "When I first knew him he was 

 spavined in both hind legs. 



" His spirit was very high and yet he was so reliable that he 

 would hardly ever break, and his bottom was of the finest and 

 toughest quality. He was live oak as well as hickory, for the 

 best of his races were made after he was twenty years old. 

 He was more than fourteen years of age before he was known 

 at all as a trotter except that he could go a distance the whole 

 length of the ' New York road ' as well as any horse that had 

 ever been extended on it. 



" Topgallant then belonged to a gentleman by the name of 

 Green. In the year 1829, when in his twenty-second year, he 

 trotted four-mile heats against Whalebone over the Hunting- 

 ton Park course, Philadelphia. There were four heats before 

 it was decided. Topgallant won the race after a desperate 

 struggle. Time 11.16, 11.06, 11.17, and 12.15. This old horse 

 of twenty-two years old that could trot four four-mile heats 

 that would have made sixteen miles in less than forty-six min- 

 utes, and who could easily have gone his twenty miles in an 

 hour, had it been twenty miles against time, may justly be con- 

 sidered as one of the shining landmarks of ' ye olden time.' 



''But if we follow him into his twenty-fourth year, 1831, 

 two years after the great race above alluded to, when he and 

 Whalebone and six others of the best of their time met at the 

 Huntington Park course at Philadelphia and trotted a race of 

 three-mile heats, we find that there were eight trotters in this 

 race — Dread, Topgallant, Collector, Chancellor, "Whalebone, 

 Lady Jackson, Moonshine, and Columbus. The race was un- 

 der saddle and was one of the greatest and most exciting races 

 of the year. These horses all trotted twelve miles in this race, 

 old Topgallant winning one heat and was second in the last 

 heat." 



The following week in Baltimore, in a race of three-mile 

 heats against "Whalebone, Topgallant won ; thus showing in a 

 marked degree the tremendous endurance and recuperative 



